Twitter Rolling Out Curation Tool and Interactive Features For Publishers

Twitter is growing up; in an effort to tidy up the Twitter experience, add more features and functionality, and generally bring more maturity to the microblogging platform, the company will be rolling out some changes soon.

More to the point, Twitter is declaring itself as a neutral platform for users to create and share content as opposed to a media company. That may seem like semantics, but it’s a hugely important distinction. Even though Twitter is boxing out third-party apps and restricting access just to Twitter, the the company is trying to portray the move as more like a streamlining of the platform instead of increasingly restrictive controls--a sore spot for many users indeed.

"It's not about being a destination," said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. "I'm a huge believer in syndication. Platform companies always outflank and outlast point solutions and individual products."

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo

According to a Reuters report, Twitter will be unveiling a tool for users (especially journalists) to curate their tweets during breaking events to provide a more cohesive story. Other new features will include “tweet boxes” that will include content from or about a given event that will augment the stream of posts--Costolo gave the example of interactive live polls for an NBA All-Star game--as well as the long-awaited ability to for users to download and keep archives of their own tweets.

Said Costolo: "We want to migrate to a world in which the 140 characters can serve as a caption for additional functionality. We'd like that to include things like real-time data, even an application functionality."

It sounds like the Twitter of old will become a thing of the past, and it’s all purportedly coming by the end of the year.